I’m probably not going to make any friends with this one.
And honestly, I’m not sure I care—because it’s something I’ve been sitting on for a long time.
I’m part of the LGBTQ ( I resent the “Q” because I was called it along with F*ggot as insults. I really don’t accept it) community. That’s not new, and neither is the fact that I grew up in a time when just those four letters carried enough weight to get you judged, dismissed, or worse.
In recent years, there’s been a growing effort to expand those letters—to make sure every identity is seen, named, and recognized. And I want to be very clear about something before I go any further:
I understand why that matters.
A lot of people have been marginalized. A lot of people have had to fight to even be acknowledged. I’m not interested in taking that away from anyone. I’ve lived enough of that myself to know better.
But somewhere along the way, it feels like we shifted focus.
Instead of building a bigger table, we started arguing over the seating chart.
I’ve seen people get genuinely upset—angry—because someone forgot a letter, used the wrong term, or didn’t perfectly identify someone’s place in the ever-expanding acronym. I’ve experienced it myself.
Not because I was trying to exclude anyone.
Not because I was being malicious.
But because I didn’t get it exactly right.
And here’s the truth: I’m still learning.
I came from a time where these conversations weren’t front and center. I try—I really do—to say the right thing, to respect people, to be inclusive. But sometimes, in trying to get every label perfect, it feels like we’ve created a system where intent matters less than technical accuracy.
That’s a problem.
I read something by Dan Savage that stuck with me—about people being put through what he called a kind of “queer test.”
A test to prove whether they were “queer enough” to belong.
Think about that for a second.
We spent decades fighting to be accepted into the world at large…
and now we’re building smaller gates inside our own community.
That doesn’t make sense to me.
There’s already enough rejection out there.
Why are we adding more of it ourselves?
And here’s where I think this actually matters more than people realize.
When everything becomes hyper-specific, overly labeled, and rigidly defined, something gets lost in translation—especially for people outside the community who want to understand and support it.
Allies don’t walk away because diversity exists.
They walk away when they feel like they’re going to get it wrong no matter how hard they try.
Confusion turns into frustration.
Frustration turns into disengagement.
And suddenly, the message we were trying to share gets buried under the fear of saying the wrong thing.
That doesn’t help anyone.
This isn’t about “I got mine, you get yours.”
It’s about remembering what actually mattered in the first place.
Recognition is important.
Identity is important.
But community is supposed to be the thing that holds all of that together.
Not a checklist.
Not a test.
Not a set of rules you have to pass to belong.
Just a place where people can sit down and be who they are.
We’ve spent so much time trying to define every part of the community that we’ve started to lose sight of how to welcome people into it.
It’s like we’re arguing over what color to paint the community center instead of making sure the door is actually open.
And that’s the part that bothers me.
At the end of the day, the people who matter in my life don’t love me because I got the acronym right.
My dog doesn’t care.
My mom doesn’t care.
They just love me for who I am.
And maybe—just maybe—that’s the part we should be holding onto.